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This chapter explores how practitioners in the criminal justice agencies create complex decisions concerning risk within the current highly charged climate of media and political concern about public protection. The aim of this chapter is not to look simply at the questions of procedure, but to develop a richer and deeper discussion on how practitioners make difficult judgements regarding risk. In this chapter, risk refers to the risk of harm that a young person may present to others although many of the issues would also be relevant to discussion of assessments of vulnerability or risk of self-harm and suicide. In this chapter, the focus is on the knowledge and the thinking processes of practitioners in making judgements about risk in relation to young offenders. In particular, the chapter examines how practitioners collect and analyse information on young offenders. It examines the assessment and prediction tools used by the practitioners in predicting offending behaviour and the risk/need assessment including the Asset and the Offender Assessment System (OASys) employed by the practitioners. The chapter also presents data from the Asset Risk of Serious Harm (ROSH) forms completed by practitioners from a national sample of Youth Offending Teams (YOTs).

This chapter discusses the development of the performance assessment system for social care. It covers the period from the introduction of the Performance Assessment Framework in 1998 to the organisational changes of 2004, including discussion of the yearly star ratings for each council with social services responsibilities introduced in 2002. It considers the extent to which users have participated in setting the agenda for performance assessment. It notes that there are still no directly user-defined indicators. It explains that the effectiveness of user involvement in improving quality of service is also an area that needs to be better evaluated.

This chapter explores the back-to-basics move promoted by a pair of bills—the ABCs bills—with the aim of arriving at a more balanced curriculum. At roughly the same time, Governor Wilson signed a bill—AB 265 (The California Assessment and Achievement Act)—that created a new statewide assessment system that was intended to replace the California Learning Assessment System. The bill promoted the use of off-the-shelf standardized tests in order to test basic skills mastery and provided funds for the development of new statewide testing program in academic subjects for several levels. The chapter looks at several programs, attempts at reform, and implementations that have taken place in more recent years. It looks at, for example, the CDE and the Mathematics Program Advisory, a program that intended to provide guidance to teachers and schools. It touches on MathLand—one of the progressive, innovative curricula that was approved in 1994, and explores other important and notable events of that time.

This chapter focuses on issues surrounding the relationship of the assessment and attainment of children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities that arise from visual, hearing, or multi-sensory impairments. It examines some of the implications of an assessment system in England that pulls in two opposing directions. This system can be found in the framework of government policy that was put in place by the Labour Administration, through the Every Child Matters Agenda (ECM).

This chapter further explores the efforts made by Bill Honig and his staff up to 1990—their goals to change testing, teacher preparation, and available curricular materials. During this time, there was a growing concern about a rigorous, well-aligned assessment system wherein the focus might turn to testing methods. This was a problem in that such a focus on testing also shapes curricular content and pedagogy. Teachers and schools tend to mimic how the content is tested. Thus, under pressure to improve test scores and prepare students, schools might provide exercises that look just like the tests. Tests were thus very important in making reforms, especially because they were one of the factors that needed to be aligned with the 1985 Framework. This chapter looks at the means through which educators searched for new curricular materials. These educators were Walter Denham, Joan Akers, and others—CDE staff members that were frustrated with their experiences with textbook companies.

This chapter explores the disintegration of California's mathematics education reform. In 1992, California already had many pieces of the reform puzzle in place: a framework and aligned assessment system, a theory of professional development, and innovative curricula. One factor that contributed to its demise was the rising tensions between Bill Honig and the State Board—where insiders spoke of “power struggles.” In 1991 and 1992, then, the State Board sued Honig due to his unwillingness to implement some of their policies. This, in turn, would lead to the board acquiring more power. The chapter also look at the demise of CLAS mathematics and language arts performance assessments. These CLAS tests contained multiple choice and open-ended qusetions, questions that were harder to mark which needed “matrix sampling.” This resulted in a lot of questions and suspicions that eventually led to the reform's downfall. This, along with other attempts at reform, were thwarted.

This chapter explores the effects of California's mathematics reform as a learning policy. It examines whether students' learning has improved in schools where teachers had substantial opportunities to learn using data from the 1994 administration of California Learning Assessment System (CLAS).

This chapter probes the patterns of teachers' ideas and practices in relation to teachers' opportunities to learn. First, it outlines measures of teachers' ideas about mathematics instruction, their classroom practices, and their familiarity with and attitude toward reform. It then examines the link between teachers' learning opportunities and their ideas and practices, as well as teachers' experiences with the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS). Finally, the chapter considers whether state-sponsored professional development among teachers influenced the implementation of reform.

This chapter explores the nature and extent of influences on learning by examining the instruments that policymakers used to urge teachers to learn. It first discusses the survey on which the analysis is based and what it tells about teachers, their schools, and students. The goal of the survey was to situate the original Michigan State University case studies in a wider picture of mathematics practice in California elementary schools. The chapter then discusses the instruments that were deployed by policymakers to support teachers' learning. The policy instruments include curriculum materials, professional development, professional networks, and the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS).